The dates for the III STANISLAW MONIUSZKO INTERNATIONAL VOCAL
COMPETITION have been announced: Oct 1-11, 1998. The competition is sponsored by the
Teatr Narodowy, Warsaw and organized by Maria Foltyn, artistic
director of the competition, who founded it six years ago. Details
in next month's newsletter or fax Poland direct: 011-48-22-692-
0642. All singers are encouraged to apply. This might be an unforgettable experience!

OTHER NEWS:

A new set of Three Dances composed by Juliusz ZAREBSKI (1854-1885) and orchestrated by Franz
LISZT, was found in Brussels among family papers of Ernest Vanderlinden (a descendent of Franz
Servais, a student of Liszt). Zarebski also studied with Liszt and the music journal Strings
reports that this "manuscript may have been Lisztís last work before his death."

According to the BBC Music Journal (September issue), two Polish pianists figure in
the "Who's Who in Music?" list. Krystian ZIMERMAN as part of the "establishment" and Piotr
ANDERSZEWSKI as "new blood" coming in. Bravo for Piotr! I remember him when he was a
student at USC. He and his sister, violinist Dorota, gave many memorable performances for the
Polish-American community in southern California. They were especially electrifying in their rendition
of Hungarian music (their mother is Hungarian).

American artists scheduled to perform this season in Poland with
the National Philharmonic in Warsaw include: Garrick OHLSSON,
Artur PAPAZIAN, Leon FLEISHER, Jessye NORMANB Also Polish pianists
Piotr ANDERSZEWSKI and Piotr PALECZNY.

The Polish American Journal reported that when violinists of the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra were asked recently who they thought
were the greatest violinists of all time, their first choice was
Jascha HEIFETZ with Polish-born Henryk SZERYNG coming in second. I
heard Szeryng a few years ago in the now-defunct Ambassador
Auditorium in Pasadena and I must say that his playing was
emotionally overwhelming and technically superb.

A new book on composer Wojciech KILAR just published by PWM:
Rozmowy z Wojciechem Kilarem (Conversations with Wojciech Kilar).
He is the film composer in Poland and also known to some of you for
his film score of Dracula and..... Authors are Klaudia Podobinska
and Leszek Polony. PWM. Krakow 1997.

Two journals about Polish musical matters have recently came into existence. Both periodicals are
published in Poland, in Polish; they may be ordered from anywhere in the world directly from
their publishers and distributors (addresses included below). The first, monthly journal has been available since 1994,
now reaching its 47th issue. Its title, STUDIO. Magazyn Plytowy i Radiowy (Radio and
Recordings Magazine) well reflects the contents consisting of quality articles about music and performance practice, profiles of composers,
CD reviews, and even current programs of Program 2 of the Polskie Radio S.A. With colorful, glossy pages, and fully professional content, it is a joy to read and behold.
The publisher's address: STUDIO, ul. Madalinskiego 42 m. 62, 02-544 Warszawa, Poland. Tel/fax:
011-48-22--49-23-60.

The second publication, GITARA. Historia. Aktualnosci (Guitar: History and Current News)
has appeared on the market this year. This quarterly presents articles and news of interest to all classical guitarists,
especially those interested in the Polish repertoire for this instrument. The publisher's address is:
Krzysztof NIEBORAK (Editor), 75-335 Koszalin, ul. Podgorna 59/2, Poland. Tel: 011-48--94-450-401.

And by osmosis: Steven STUCKY (the first specialist on the music
of Poland's greatest contemporary composer, Witold Lutoslawski). I
wondered about "polonizing" his name to either Stuckiewicz or
Stuckowski. The latter would be pretty close to Stokowsky. We will
have to make him an "honorary Pole." Oct 23-26 is the west coast
premiere of his "Pinturas de Tamayo."

RECENT PERFORMANCES:

The "Gorecki Autumn" festival at USC (Oct 1-5) was a huge success!
The October 3 concert, "Gorecki conducting Gorecki" with soprano
Elizabeth Hynes was a sellout at USC's Bovard Auditorium (which
holds 1558) as soon as it was announced. Mark SWED, chief music
critic of the Los Angeles Times gave a positive review of the
concert.

The tempos were unprecedented; Gorecki added a full ll
minutes to the suggested timing of 54 minutes in the printed score.
And the performance was simply extraordinary, practically
unfathomable under the circumstances. Gorecki is not a very
experienced conductor. He had little more than a single rehearsal.
The orchestra, consisting of university students, has been together
only the few weeks of the new school year. But Gorecki's
personality is like a force of nature, and he achieved an intensity
that I have never heard equaled in this music from far more
accomplished professional orchestras.

Before the concert began, Larry Livingston, Dean of the School of
Music and Steven Sample, president of the university formally
announced the endowed position of Dr. Maria Anna Harley as
the first "Stefan and Wanda Wilk Director of the Polish Music
Reference Center" and they publicly thanked my husband and myself
for our commitment, financially and otherwise), for establishing
the PMRC in 1985.

Another highlight of the festival was a lecture by British
musicologist Adrian Thomas, author of a monograph on Gorecki.
There were two other concerts of Gorecki's music "Solo and Chamber
Music" on Oct 1 and a concert by the USC Contemporary Music
Ensemble under the direction of Donald CROCKETT on Sunday night.

In addition to a student forum on Friday, a symposium was held on
Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with guests speakers: Adrian Thomas,
James Harley, David Kopplin, Luke B. Howard, Mark Swed and Maria
Anna Harley who organized the event.

USC music faculty and students were remarking on this being the
best event ever!

John ADAMS's first piano concerto, "Century Rolls," written for
Polish-American pianist Emanuel AX was premiered in September. A
European premiere is scheduled for early November by the London
Symphony Orchestra. The work reflects "the composer's fascination
with the piano rolls that helped to immortalize such performers as
Gershwin, PADEREWSKI, and Jelly Roll Morton."

On October 3rd "The World of Karol Szymanowski," was hosted by June
LeBell of Radio station WZXR, and sponsored by the Kosciuszko
Foundation of NY. Performers included Laura KAFKA, soprano, Piotr
FOLKERT, piano and the PENDERECKI STRING QUARTET at Carnegie Hall.
Jerzy KAPLANEK, first violinist of the Quartet played "Arethusa's
fountain" and Sonata in d minor, op. 9. Ms Kafka sang "Songs of
the Fairy Princess" and some of the "Children's Rhymes." Piano
selections included Variations in b minor, op. 10 and the famous
Etude in b minor, op. 4, as well as two mazurkas. The Quartet
performed the II String Quartet, op. 56. Tom Pniewski, director of
cultural affairs at the foundation, spoke briefly before the
concert about Szymanowski's life and some of the ties between
Stravinsky and Bartok.

OCT 18: Los Angeles pianist Wojciech KOCYAN flew to San Francisco
to perform a recital of music by CHOPIN, MOZART and GORECKI at the
Century Club of California. Sponsored by the Chopin Foundation's
Council of San Francisco. Gosia Kossakowska, president.

Also on OCT 18 and also in San Francisco, pianist Tadeusz
MAJEWSKI presented "Images of Chopin" with Julie Mueller, narrator,
reading Chopin's letters at the First United Methodist Church in
Napa for the benefit of the Arts Council of Napa Valley.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING:

Time to think of Christmas gifts: Send for the free catalog from
Pol Art 1-800-278-9393 (http://www.polart.com). They have
MONIUSZKO operas "Halka" and "Straszny Dwor" also two CDs of Songs
for home use.

For KIEPURA videos call the Bel Canto Society at 1-800-347-5056 or
Fax 1-908-225-1562. They have 4 with Kiepura.

"Rubinstein Remembered" A 4907 ($19.98) a video created in
celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Polish pianist's birth,
tracing his pianistic career from the early years in Poland through
his rise to international acclaim. Order from
the Public Television source 1-800-799-1199.

Do you know someone who plays an instrument? How about presenting
him/her with a gift of:

Look up Polish composers' scores avialable from European American
Retail Music: http://www.jwpepper.com. Their June 1997 "New
Publications" catalog lists Alexander TANSMAN's Piano Collection.
15 piano works (#5529441) for only $6.95. The music reflects his
Polish background, as well as French and American characteristics
(he lived in France and the U.S. for some years).

Or

Order the new Henle Urtext edition (#5502174) of all 57 CHOPIN
mazurkas, plus 3 fragments. $17.95. Call 1-800-345-6296. They
also have the study score of GORECKI's "Kleines Requiem fur eine
Polka, op. 66" for piano and 13 instruments and PENDERECKI's recent
"Sinfonietta" no. 2 for clarinet and strings.

Available from the PAJ Bookstore in Buffalo, NY:

"Ring in a Polish Christmas" Polish carols performed by the LIRA
ENSEMBLE & CHAMBER CHORUS with booklet of text and translations.

or
PAJ's Polish Village Christmas. Available on CD ($12.95) or tape
cassette ($8.95).

THE POLISH CONNECTION:

They must be Polish with surnames like this. Jeff TYZIK conducted
the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in a premiere performance of
his "Festive Overture" on Sep 25th.

Raymond WOJCIK, will conduct the premiere of his "Sea Songs" on
April 18, 1998 with the Garden State Philharmonic, New Jersey.

I found the name of Stephen SITARSKI, concertmaster of the Kitchener-
Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, in the Sep/Oct 1997 issue of Symphony
magazine.

Another good sounding Polish name: Lucia DLUGOSZEWSKI who was
commissioned to write an orchestra work for the Peninsula Symphony
with Sara Jobin conducting it on May 15, 1998. She was born in
Detroit, Michigan and went to my alma mater, Wayne University.

TV POLONIA (Polish Television USA) will broadcast its program from
Warsaw 24 hours daily, thanks to the Direct Broadcasting System.
Wanda Tomczykowska reports on this in her monthly newsletter,
Forum. For info: call 847-718-1001 or look it up on the internet:
www.tvp.com.pl/programy/tvpol-ix.htm.

To keep in good shape physically, dance the Polka! So says a reader of thePolish American Journal
, Gram Stella Mazurek (age 77) of Buffalo, NY. Most enjoyable
kind of exercise, too!

DIRECTOR'S REPORT:

POLISH THEMES AT AN AMERICAN CONFERENCE

by Maria Anna Harley

Soon after the Gorecki Autumn, the positive results of which exceeded my expectations (and will be summarized
in a new book of essays and Gorecki's interviews given at USC), my attention shifted to Witold Lutoslawski.
I had proposed a session on Lutoslawski's music for the 1997 Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Phoenix, Arizona)
and my proposal was accepted. Three papers on Lutoslawski appeared in the program of this
important conference, the annual gathering of music historians from the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Even more importantly, the meeting was held
in association with the annual gathering of the Society for Music Theory (as it is customary every two years), so the potential audience
of our session included historians, theoreticians, students of both areas, and composers.

Who was speaking, then? The first paper of the
Lutoslawski and Schnebel joint AMS-SMT session was given by Prof. Adrian Thomas--whose expertise in Polish music
goes far beyond Gorecki (Thomas was the Provost's Distinguished Visitor at USC's Gorecki Autumn). His paper on "Future Sketches:
Lutoslawski's Jeux venitiens" was based on documents held at the Paul Sacher Foundation in
Basel as welll as those newly located by Prof. Thomas in the Archives of John Cage--to whom Lutoslawski offered the manuscript
score of Jeux venitiens with sketch material and the original version of the piece. Prof. Thomas discussed differences between the two
versions of the music. In the abstract, printed in the conference program, Thomas described the content of his paper in the following words:

Jeux venitiens (1960-1961) occupies a pivotal place in Lutoslawski's career. Lutoslawski employs his twelve-note harmonic schemes and "ad libitum"
rhythmic principle substantively for the first time, and the work's structural design also anticipates many subsequent pieces. This paper investigates
the new and genuinely agant-garde means with which Lutoslawski fashined his mature languge. [...] The sketches shed much light on later technical and
expressive refinements. In addition, they demonstrate that melody, as well as harmony and rhythm, was an integral component of Lutoslawski's thinking even at this
crucially experimental moment.

The second speaker, Dr. Martina Homma of Cologne, Germany, is currently a guest of the PMRC, working with me on a joint conference project and conducting her
own research. Homma's 1995 dissertation on Witold Lutoslawski's compositional technique is based on over 10 years of
research, supported by the composer with access to his scores, sketches and with interviews; her disertation received the highest academic award of the University of Cologne ("opus eximium").
I hope to see it published as a book by the Polish Music Reference Center. At the AMS-SMT Meeting, however, Homma spoke about "Sound Color and Harmony
in Lutoslawski's Music." Her profound knowledge of Lutoslawski 's compositional process and musical style was obvious in her discussion
of different examples where the composer used tone color and harmonic elements together to create specific tone-complexes.
The paper explained the main principles behind linking color and harmony, characterized Lutoslawski's style of orchestration, illustrated the
conjunction of layered instrumental color with intervallic structure as well as with rhythm and texture. Homma concluded:

The timbral-harmonic dimension of Lutoslawski's compositions is closely related to other aspects of his compositional technique, such as
local harmony ("harmonia lokalna"). Its creation through a selective use of intervallic structures undergoes an evolution that may be traced chronologically throughout
Lutoslawski's oeuvre.

Finally, in my presentation, "New Insights into Lutoslawski's Concept of the Sound Plane" I drew on my research conducted in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel in the summer of 1996. I was looking
through sketch material and Lutoslawski's notes for information for a completely different paper, on the use of the subjects of Death and Night in his music; this paper was presented
at the Lutoslawski conference in June 1997 in Warsaw (the paper will be published in Lutoslawski
Studies). While browsing through the collection of documents I found Lutoslawski's notes dating back to the late 1950s and the early 1960s
about a new compositional technique, based on "sound planes" and "objects." Lutoslawski's use of French terminology (l'objet sonore), let me
on a search for the sources of Lutoslawski's ideas in the writings of Pierre Schaeffer, who coined the French term. In the abstract, I wrote:

This term [i.e. the sound plane] describes musical entities with clearly delineated
temporal borders and pitch-timbral content.. [...] Sketch material for Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux (1962-63) and Paroles tissees (1965) contains many instances of superimposed sound planes that intersect and permeate
each other. Lutoslawski's idea of complex juxtaposition of evolving sound masses has parallels in the music of Xenakis, Penderecki, or Ligeti, and may be contrasted with the use of sonorous elements
by Bacewicz and Ptaszynska. The composer, profoundly concerned with perceptual clarity, structures the sound planes in accordance with the principles of auditory scene analysis--including the phenomena
of masking and auditory stream segregation. The planes located in the same registral space are differentiated by timbre, while planes of similar timbres are sharply distinguished by register, articulation, dynamics, and so on.

The short durations of each paper, including mine, did not leave time to realize everything promised in the abstract; my cuts extended to comparisons with other composers, including Bacewicz and Ptaszynska. This was, therefore, the first question of a very lively and
interesting question period. The three papers created a certain whole, allowed for interactions between the speakers, and created a precedent in the history of the AMS Meetings:
a session dedicated--almost in its entirety--to one contemporary Polish composer.
(The fourth paper of the session, by Paul Attinello, discussed the music of a German avant-garde
composer, Dieter Schnebel).

However, the Lutoslawski session was not the only Polish element on the program.
As usual, there were papers on Chopin, by Halina Goldberg, of the Queen's College and Graduate Center, City University of New York and by Adriana Ponce of Brandeis University. Dr. Goldberg's presentation on "Chopin in Warsaw's Salons" drew extensively
from the research for her doctoral dissertation, a pioneering study into the sociological dimension of the musical life in Warsaw. Dr. Goldberg writes in the abstract of her paper:

Much has been said about Chopin's participation in Parisian salon life,
but the salons frequented by Chopin in Warsaw are given marginal mention. Yet it is in Warsaw's
salons that the young Fryderyk received his social grooming, and it is here that he met may of his future Parisian hosts or made connections that
opened the doors to the most respected households of European capitals. [...] The post-war Polish research emphasized the incebtedness of Chopin's music
to folkore and downplayed the contribution of intelligentsia and aristocracy as representative of boureois decadence and the aristocratic abuse of wealth. Yet
I have found an abundance of information about this active salon culture in diaries, letters, and journal
articles. Warsaw had over forty significant salons, and direct evidence of Chopin's musical presence
can be established in most of them. These salons were just as splendid and socially refined as their countepart in Paris or Vienna, and they
sought the same lvel of intellectual and artistic experiences. The picture that now unfolds contradicts
the accepted image of Warsaw asa cultural backwater and instead restores the Polish capital to its
European status."

Finally, the the very last presentation of the AMS-SMT Meeting, Dr. Adriana Ponce discussed "Chopin's Ballades: A Romantic Representation
of Form and Time." The paper proposed a new interpretation of the form of these works "in terms of a process resembling a conic spiral" on the basis of
Chopin's "idiosyncratic process of thematic recurrence together with a conspisuous delay of any high-level structural dominants in Chopin's first, third and fourth
Ballades." In contrast to the four papers summarized above, Dr. Ponce's study did not rely on newly accessible source materials (sketches, documents)
but on a revised interpretation of form in Chopin's music, cast in new theoretical terms.